Vigilantes
by Amatara
Summary: Nothing's simple anymore. Least of all finding Jacob. Missing snippets from "Cabin Fever", after Locke suggests to set up camp for the night.


"_He _takes first watch?" Hurley asks, still sounding breathless. His tone, Ben notes, is less hostile than surprised, and of course Hurley's tone never lies. How that comes as a relief and not a nuisance, is as clear a warning of his own mental state as anything. By all rights, he should be fighting it, of course, except he doesn't know if he wants to. Yet.

"Rest easy, Hugo. I'm sure John sleeps with a knife," Ben says, dryly, from where he's loading the rifle. But his heart's not in it; not that Hurley is likely to realize. John, on the other hand…

Truth be told, he can't name the last thing his heart _was _in, short of… well. Short of summoning monsters for vengeance. Fighting Widmore – yes, but, before today, more out of necessity than anything else. Pulling the trigger on Locke – most definitely not. He'd _hoped _it would, if not feel like a victory, then at least lift some of the numbness he seemed to have been dragging around for – weeks? Months? But of course, that had been an idle hope. And of course, he should have known that, too.

"We're on the same side now, Hugo," John replies, stoking up the campfire with patient nudges, feeding it twig by little twig. "Actually, we've always been. Some of us just didn't realize it yet." He doesn't look at Ben when he says it, and Ben doesn't look back. Instead, he clicks the barrel in place and puts the weapon across his knees, watching the firelight skitter across the metal.

"If you say so, dude," Hurley shrugs, but he still pulls a face as he lowers himself next to his backpack. "So, um – you're cool with him, like, trying to kill us, and blow up our camp, and – stuff?"

"What's done is done, Hugo," John says, retrieving a bottle of water to take a long swallow. He offers the bottle to Hurley, who shakes his head. "We start with a fresh slate. No grudges."

Ben wants to say _wrong_, but now isn't the time.

* * *

While John's little speech could hardly have reassured him, Hurley's still snoring the second he puts his head down. More than that, he does it less than two yards from where Ben's sitting, keeping watch, gun a steadying weight in his hands.

He'd be jealous, he thinks, if he had any jealousy left, but he must have ran out. That, and to watch Hurley sleep is strangely relaxing – not at all like watching John sleep, which is like counting the beats between lightning and the next thunderclap. But Hurley, never mind the wary remarks, the little sideways glances, has to be physically incapable of sustaining distrust for over an hour.

Of course, Hurley's attitude is exactly the kind that gets one killed here. The kind the island has no patience with. Ben would know, having catered to the island's impatience on more than one occasion. He'd know, having borne the brunt of it too.

Sleep of the innocent, he muses. He's sure he didn't sleep like that, even when he _was_ still an innocent. Or maybe he never has been.

Innocents don't take their mothers' lives, after all. Or their daughters'.

* * *

He forgot about the blood. At least, until he's holding his hands up to the fire, finally giving in to the craving for warmth. They're filthy, streaked with splotches of red that, in the firelight, could be any color at all. For a second, he's tempted to leave them like that, but there's such a thing as too much symbolism.

"Yours?" John asks, lifting his head from his backpack like he's been awake the whole time. He says it off-handedly, as casual as if he were asking about the weather. Except nothing John says ever is.

"Hers," Ben says, scrubbing his knuckles, then his wrists, with a handkerchief that was still impossibly clean when he found it. "Just thought I'd solidify the metaphor, John." He tries to make his voice sound just a little fragile when he says it – or maybe he doesn't try at all. It doesn't matter either way. He stares absently at a bruise on his forearm, large and yellowish and none too recent, that somehow he doesn't know where he got it.

"Here," John says, using his free hand – the one that's not holding a knife – to dig through his pockets, then throw something to Ben. He makes no attempt to catch it, instead scoops it up from the grass. It turns out to be a smallish flask, filled with something that, when he unscrews the cap and smells it, is clearly alcohol but not any more definable than that. "Warm yourself up," John adds, a flicker in his eyes that could be any emotion, or none at all.

Ben lifts his own eyes to the canopy, more because it beats meeting John's than because he actually expects to see something there. It's been a while since he slept out in the open, without even a tent for shelter, so yes, he's cold, but he knows for a fact he wasn't showing it. John's doing better, he thinks, in getting under one's skin – even though _his _skin John never had much trouble getting under in the first place.

"Thank you," he replies, in the tone he knows John knows means something else entirely, "but I'll pass. Besides, it's an illusion that alcohol does anything but lower the body temperature, rather than raise it."

If he didn't know any better, he'd swear John had to smile at that. "Never underestimate the power of illusion," John says, with a toss of his head. He closes his eyes, leans back on the jacket he's using as a pillow. Ben relaxes his hands, minutely, around the gun on his lap. "By the way, Ben –" John pipes up, without opening his eyes. "What is it with you and pain?"

"I –" He blinks. "Excuse me?"

"I keep trying to figure it out, but I can't. All I can tell is, you're not just indifferent towards it, you go searching it out. If pain doesn't find you, you find _it. _Why? As a bargaining chip? As – penance?"

"Why is everything penance to you, John?" he retorts, with more vigor than he feels. "I assume you believe being shot and left in a mass grave was penance, too?"

John's eyes open again, but don't try to find his. "As a matter of fact, I do." And of course, Ben doesn't say how he's suspected it was penance for _him_, more than John. Or perhaps not _more, _but –

"You know how they say what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger?" He curls his fingers around the trigger, feeling the chill of it against his skin.

John pushes himself up, just slightly. "It's… what they say, yes." But he sounds intrigued despite himself.

"Well, it doesn't, John," he says, with an intensity that takes him by surprise. "What kills you _doesn't _make you stronger. It dulls the feeling, but not enough. Never enough. So don't get too attached to anything in this place. Not even the island itself. _Especially_ not the island. Because when you do, sooner or later, something – or someone – will ask it as a sacrifice."

"I'm aware of that," John answers, with perfect sincerity, and Ben smiles a joyless little smile heavenwards.

"No, John. I don't think you are."

* * *

"So why do you call him John, anyway?" That's Hugo's voice, coming not from beside him, where it should be, but somewhere above him, which can't be right at all. Ben jerks back to awareness with a start, to a sputtering fire and a leg that's numb from sitting.

"Whoa – ease up, dude," Hurley mutters, as he grabs for the rifle. "No need to, like, _use_ that, or anything. I thought you were awake, I just got up to, you know… Call of nature and all?"

Ben nods, warily, the rush of adrenalin giving way for exhaustion. That, and a dull ache at his midriff that, impossibly, reveals itself as hunger. Which is fitting, really. You start out by missing something – rest, food, a loved one, _faith_ – then in the end, once you've passed through the loss, you no longer even realize it's there. And then something reminds you.

"What were you saying?" he asks, rubbing his calf with one hand while he tries to remember the question.

"Locke," Hurley clarifies, still looking a little wide-eyed, but sitting back down anyway. "Why d'you keep calling him John? No one calls him that but you."

"Well, then, maybe that's your reason right there," Ben sighs. "Or something else. Some claim that calling people by their first names – their _real _first names – gives you power over them. You do know that myth, don't you, Hugo?" He says it slyly, without even knowing why, but Hurley's face is a cautious blank.

"I know it, dude." Hurley's pupils glint in the firelight. "I just don't think it's playing fair, that's all."

* * *

"Get some sleep," John says, in a tone that's not actually gentle, but not quite the poised neutral that it was. Ben holds out the gun, relaxing his grip only when John's hands have tightened around it, and even then, it feels like losing something. Like handing over the weapon means letting down his guard – which is exactly what it means, but it's bad enough without John knowing. "Let go of the rifle, Ben," John says, like he does know. Well, of course he would. "Don't worry. It'll still be here tomorrow."

He doesn't add _So will I, _but Ben knows it's said anyway, between those murky lines of meaning that are John's alone. For once, that thought's not quite a burden.

Sleep is an illusion, he thinks, but when he puts his head down, Hurley's rhythmic breathing in his ears, it sneaks up on him like rain in the night.

There _is_ tomorrow. And they'll still be here.


End file.
